Jensen Huang is out, and prediction market bettors are already putting money on who will take his place atop Nvidia. Trading in contracts on his successor picked up earlier this week on Kalshi and Polymarket, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in trading volume. On Thursday, Nvidia announced Huang’s resignation and named finance chief Colette Kress interim CEO, adding that the board is searching for a permanent successor and will consider internal and external candidates. Kress, however, is not the favorite to take the top job.
Instead, Nvidia VP and general manager of its high-performance computing division, Ian Buck, who has been at Nvidia since 2004, leads the field on Kalshi with 37% odds. Kress follows at 19%, ahead of Rene Haas, CEO of Arm Holdings, at 9%. Arm is a British chip designer that licenses its technology to Nvidia. Trading volume in the market has already surpassed $1.5 million. Polymarket’s market shows a similar lineup, with the same leading contenders drawing comparable odds and trading volume nearing $630,000.
Madison Huang, Jensen Huang’s daughter and Nvidia’s senior director of product marketing, trails the leading contenders, with less than a 1% chance of succeeding him on Kalshi and roughly 2% on Polymarket.
Prediction markets have been capitalizing on the turmoil at Nvidia since the company announced an investigation into Huang, who told its board he had an intimate relationship with a business executive reportedly identified by U.S. intelligence officials as a Chinese spy. The scrutiny intensified Wednesday, when reports surfaced alleging that Huang also had an extramarital affair with an Nvidia employee.
Bettors are wagering on more than Nvidia’s next leader. One Polymarket contract generated more than $22.5 million in trading volume on when Huang would announce his departure. Another active Kalshi contract asks when Huang will testify before Congress and has drawn nearly $170,000 in trading volume. Traders put the odds of testimony before next July at 93%, compared with roughly 91% before January and 86% before December.
The turmoil has also put Nvidia’s stock price in focus, with shares down roughly 5% Thursday morning at about $165. Traders on Kalshi are also betting on those price swings through perpetual futures contracts, taking positions on whether the price will rise or fall without owning shares. Those contracts recorded $111 million in trading volume over the past 24 hours.